We are still buzzing from UK GovCamp, the public sector’s yearly brainstorm on all things digital.

We ran three workshops:

We had a session entitled “Open data – how to”, led by Glyn Wintle, Rufus Pollock and Jeni Tennison. We discussed the issues around releasing data and how to deal with press interest. A number of developers gave their preferences for publishing formats (anything but PDF, please!), and the group explored ways we should be connecting the data users and the publishers on an ongoing basis.

We had an “Intro to LinkedGov” session in the morning, led by Hadley Beeman, which produced a lot of useful feedback on what we’re doing. The most useful tidbit was that there is a hole for people needing to talk about publishing government data; it would be useful for LinkedGov to help host those conversations.

The discussion centred around the idea that stories help bring data alive, and the breadth of public data means that some part of it should be relevant to almost everyone.

We gathered a great amount of feedback and energy to help with building our community. The biggest challenge we face right now, getting all of this ready for mass input, was made a bit easier by how eager everyone is and timely it all seems to be.